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83 per cent of sports now pay men and women the same amount in prize money, research has revealed.

A study conducted by the BBC into 68 different sports shows that the pay gap has narrowed vastly in recent years, with rewards in women's sports on the rise.

However, football retained a huge disparity between prize money for men and women, particularly in the difference between the Premier League and the Women's Super League.

Of the 68 governing bodies contacted, 55 responded to researchers and of those, 44 sports pay prize money. Two of those sports (synchronised swimming and nordic combined) see men and women compete alongside each other, and of the remaining 42, 35 pay prize money in equal measures - making up 83 per cent.

The last time this study was carried out, back in 2014, just 70 per cent of sports boasted equality in terms of prize money. As recently as 1973, not one sport rewarded men and women equally.

Ivan Peter Khodabakhsh, chief executive of the Ladies European Tour, said he was still striving for parity: "We are extremely proud of the significant strides which have been made in redressing the gender imbalance in prize money across the whole of sport over the last three years," he said.

"Knowing the reality in the market, however, I would question that 80% of sports have equal prize money. We believe there is still a significant gap between the treatment of men's and women's events. More needs to be done from a social perspective to improve the perception of women's sport and the financial rewards."